Lots of people, especially rich and powerful ones, have cities, buildings, even stars named in their honor, but how many are forever known by the name of a verse form? Let’s see, there’s the Petrarchan sonnet, the Shakespearean sonnet, the Spenserian stanza—and the clerihew. E. C. Bentley, who died in …
It will come as no surprise that Oscar Wilde had rich and bohemian tastes. “Poke him and he would bleed absinthe and clotted truffles” remarked the actress Elizabeth Robins. Wilde loved to stay and dine at London`s Savoy Hotel, but the publicity it received during Wilde`s “indecency” trial lost it …
The Monk of Montaudon is a singularly curious figure in the history of medieval music. Possibly also known as Pèire de Vic, he was a noble who became a Benedictine monk around 1180, but who seems to have enjoyed deviating from monastic duties and activities. In fact, he suffered …
Deor may be the name of an Anglo-Saxon scop (pronounced “shop,” a kind of early English minstrel or bard), or it may be a pseudonym. It literally means something like “wild animal” and may refer to the poet’s low or “wild” station. Whoever this was, he left behind a poem …
I was saddened to read recently that brontosauruses never actually existed. Not only does that mean that one of the toys of my childhood was mischristened, it also means that there is no creature called a thunder lizard, and I think that’s a shame. You see, sauros was just …
Alphonse Allais (20 October 1854 – 28 October 1905) was a French writer, humorist and painter. In 1883 Alphonse Allais exhibited a painting called First Communion of Anaemic Young Girls In The Snow, which was of course a white canvas. Allais’ painting was the companion piece to his Apopleptic …
Despite his status as one of England`s best loved poets, it appears that Alfred Lord Tennyson was in fact a festive grump. This is from his “In Memoriam A.H.H.” written in 1849 With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Chrismas hearth; A rainy cloud possess’d the …
When Samuel Beckett lived briefly in Berlin, his regular haunt was a restaurant called the Giraffe. While sitting there one day after finishing his meal, he was asked by his waiter “Why is there no expression of hope in your work?” After a trademark Beckett silence, he picked up …
You may not be aware, but the acclaimed author of Ulysses was also an unashamed underwear fetishist. He was aroused by just looking at his wife Norah`s knickers and insisted she left them around the house. Not content with keeping his peccadilloes private, he was also in the habit of …
Gaius Valerius Catullus came from a well-to-do family in Verona, Italy, and owned a villa himself near fashionable Tivoli, but as a young man soon settled into a decadent life in Rome. As a poet in training, he idled with other ink-stained scriveners and lowlifes, striving to integrate a …
